Do I Need to Pay for Private Repositories on GitHub?

If you’re a GitHub user but you don’t pay, this is a good week. Historically, GitHub always offered free accounts, but the caveat was that your code had to be public. To get private repositories, you had to pay.

GitHub’s Pricing Plans

GitHub offers several pricing plans, including free and paid options, for individuals and organizations. The free plan, called GitHub Free, allows users to create unlimited public repositories and collaborate with unlimited contributors. However, private repositories were previously only available with paid plans.

GitHub Free for Personal Accounts

With GitHub Free for personal accounts, you can work with unlimited collaborators on unlimited public repositories with a full feature set. For private repositories, you have access to a limited feature set.

GitHub Free for Organizations

GitHub Free for organizations allows you to work with unlimited collaborators on unlimited public repositories with a full feature set, or unlimited private repositories with a limited feature set.

The paid plans, such as GitHub Pro and GitHub Team, offer additional features and benefits for private repositories, including:

Required pull request reviewers
Multiple pull request reviewers
Protected branches
Code owners
GitHub Pages for private sites
Wikis
Repository insights graphs

Changes to GitHub’s Plans

In April 2020, GitHub announced that all core GitHub features are now free for everyone. This means that GitHub Free for personal accounts and GitHub Free for organizations now include unlimited collaborators and unlimited private repositories.

The changes to GitHub’s plans are permanent, and users can enjoy the benefits of private repositories without the need to pay for a subscription.